In their joint contribution, the president of the German Association for English Studies (Deutscher Anglistenverband), Klaus Stierstorfer, and the president of the German Association for American Studies (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien), Peter Schneck, describe the central motivations behind the decision to actively support the pilot study for the research rating of the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) despite some fundamental skepticism among the associations's members. On the basis of five basic propositions-different in each argument-they both insist that the assessment of research quality in the humanities inevitably requires the central involvement of the disciplines assessed in order to reflect on and formulate the central categories, standards and procedures best suited for such assessments. Such a process must take into account the complexity of research processes and results in the humanities whose qualitative dimensions cannot be fully measured by quantitative methods. Rating Research: Who Needs It, and What Is It Good For? (by Klaus Stiersdorfer)Research rating and ranking is happening now, at least in German academia in my experience, and it has been growing in the anglophone countries, with which I deal professionally, at an alarming pace and as a kind of menetekel for whatever other countries may be planning to do in the future. This is why, and here is my first thesis, research rating and ranking cannot be avoided at present. If my first thesis is accepted, then it is worth exploring what it looks like at present in the humanities.

Berlin war in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. und zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts eines jener medizinischen Zentren, wo sich die Hämatologie als eine eigenständige patho-physiologische und klinische Richtung herausbildete. Insbesondere das spätere Pathologische Institut unter der Leitung von Rudolf Virchow und die II. Medizinische Klinik der Berliner Charité unter dem Direktorat von Friedrich Kraus waren die Träger dieses Institutionalisierungsprozesses. Zu den Meilensteinen auf diesem Ent-wicklungsweg zur modernen hämatologischen Forschung gehören die ersten Untersuchungen zum Thema «Weißes Blut» und die Einführung des Begriffs «Leukämie» (R. Virchow, 1846) sowie die Gründung der ersten wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Hämatologie in Berlin (A. Pappenheim, E. Grawitz, Th. Brugsch, 1908), ebenso wie die zahlreichen wegbereitenden Monographien zur Blutforschung und die viel-fältigen hämatologischen Lehrangebote im universitären Unterricht.

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Any definition of creativity is a ‘machine’ which produces exactly those instances of creativity that follow the rules of the respective definition – so how does one escape the conundrum of defining individual creativity without turning it into a mere act of reproduction? One of the central tenets of the present volume is that Construction Grammar is particularly suited to bridge the gap between everyday linguistic creativity and highly professionalized and conventionalized forms of cultural reproduction, especially creative literature. While it appears to merely follow a trend in cognitive linguistics, which emerged and firmly established itself over the last three decades, and which emphasizes the creative potential of linguistic practices over and against the definition of language and speech as a rule-based system of engendering constraints, Construction Grammar insists on its ability to provide a most profitable interdisciplinary approach for the study of creativity and language – one that would also be able to embrace and empower the study of literary creativity.

The medical journal Medicinische Reform. Eine Wochenschrift edited by Rudolf Virchow and Rudolf Leubuscher in Berlin from July 1848 to June 1849 was in spite of its short life-time one of the most important and influential periodicals during the time of German revolution and medical reforms in the middle of the 19th century. The paper gives a view of the history of edition of this ephemeral but outstanding journal as an essential source for our knowledge of the development of social medicine in Germany. Moreover it can be seen as an example for a new kind of modern scientific journals. Printing the Medicinische Reform through the years of revolution in 1848/49 was on the merits of the publishing house of Georg Reimer. In 1849 Virchow himself stopped editing the paper. Several reprints show the importance of the periodical for the history of siences (1879 Berlin, partial by Virchow; 1975 Hildesheim; 1983 Berlin). The article ends with a first complete publication of the correspondence between Virchow and Reimer about the weekly Medicinische Reform.